Hyderabad doctor diagnoses woman with vision loss from excessive smartphone usage

In a now viral tweet thread, a Hyderabad doctor cautioned of vision impairment stemming from the regular use of smartphones. Dr Sudhir Kumar talked of a 30-year-old patient's ailment which resulted in severe disabling vision symptoms.

"30-year old Manju had severe disabling vision symptoms for one and half years. This included seeing floaters, bright flashes of light, dark zig zag lines and at times inability to see or focus on objects.," tweeted Dr Kumar.

Dr Kumar said that she was referred to him by an eye doctor, in an attempt to rule out neurological causes. He further said that his patient had recently started using a smartphone for extended periods of the day, especially in the dark.


"The diagnosis was obvious now. She was suffering from smartphone vision syndrome (SVS). Long-term use of devices such as computer, smartphones or tablets can cause various eye-related disabling symptoms, referred to as computer vision syndrome (CVS) or digital vision syndrome," he added.

Dr Kumar says that he advised his patient to reduce smartphone usage, which helped her vision immensely just a few weeks later.

"At 1-month review, Manju was absolutely fine. Her vision impairment of 18 months had gone. Now, she had normal eyesight, did not see any floaters or flashes of light. Moreover, her momentary loss of vision at nights also stopped," Dr Kumar says, adding that people should take breaks from their screens more often and avoid looking at them for too long altogether.